2926: 5 Fitness Secrets That Guarantee Long Term Success

19:26Sal Di Stefano:Yes. Yeah, it was a movie kit or something like that, right? You're like, I just want the popcorn, dude. Yeah, that's all she wanted. They're like, they don't sell it individually. We have to get this movie kit thing or whatever that, which came with Snickers bar, Kit Kat, and then all this stuff. We can't let it go. And so, of course, right? So I bring it home with us and I know it's in the freezer. I'm like, I couldn't tell you the last time I had a Kit Kat, you know? But knowing I had that the day before, knowing it's in there and just like that, I'll just go eat that. It's like, that's how it is so difficult, I think, for a lot of people to do that, especially right after you kind of open that can of worms.

20:04Sal Di Stefano:Now, what I also know, too, is that if I could just tough it out, and this is, I guess, the mental game that I play, is like, if I still really want that, this week I'll have it. I'll do it after I work out on Tuesday or whatever. And so I play that game of like, I'm not going to tell myself I can't have it. I brought it back. I am going to eat it at one point. But what I'll do is I know after today, when I get back on my training, when I eat my regular meals, I won't even want it.

20:31Adam Schafer:You know, the illustration that comes to mind with this, because that's going to happen. So I'm glad you said that, Adam. It's not like you do this and they're like, it's fixed. Like, this is just a constant journey. But it's like, you know, it's like shooting an arrow at a target that's really far away. And when you fire the arrow, imagine if you could follow the arrow along its path and make slight adjustments to keep it on target. Okay? The only way you'd be able to do that is if you kept your eyes on the target. If you kept your eyes on the target, you can move it to the left. Uh-oh, we're going too far to the left.

21:03Adam Schafer:Move it to the right. And you can keep moving it to maintain that target. The target needs to be health. If the target's health, then yes, you're going to move side to side, but you're keeping your eyes on the target. If the target is aesthetics, you're going way off. You're going to go in the wrong direction, and it's going to lead to a lot of things that are going to make it very difficult for this to be consistent and real for you. Here's the next one. Discipline over motivation. This is a big one because motivation feels so good. It's one of my favorite states of mind. Also addicting. Addict.

21:36Adam Schafer:Are you kidding me? So hyped. Motivation is so addicting. We will structure things to create motivation. We'll take substances that make us feel motivated.

21:45Sal Di Stefano:We follow people just to get that juice.

21:47Adam Schafer:We love fitness influencers that have the worst advice ever, but yell into the screen and tell you whatever. Badass. To pump you up and to motivate you. we love motivation because when you're motivated, there is no, you don't need discipline. You don't need struggle. There is no struggle when you're motivated. I never had a client skip a workout who was motivated. I never had a client eat, you know, you know, quote unquote unhealthy when they were motivated. It was when they were unmotivated, this became a challenge. It was never the motivated state of mind. The problem is, is that we love motivation so much.

22:22Adam Schafer:We fall in love with it, that this is the state of mind that we work in. And when we're out of motivation, we have no tools. We have no ways to deal with what it's like to not feel motivated. So you look up and down. That's what it looks like for you. It's either on or off. Super fleeting. It's either great or off or not great. Because motivation is what I'm aiming at versus discipline. Discipline is there all the time. Now, discipline, when you're motivated, is great. When you're not motivated, it's still there. So focus on discipline. How do I build the skill of discipline? One small step at a time, one little step at a time.

22:58Adam Schafer:You build upon a previous discipline and over time, this builds, this is a long process of building. Make that the target. The target is discipline. So how do I start with this? Well, I'm not working out right now, but I feel super motivated and I haven't worked out in five years. I'm gonna go to the gym five days a week. Let me stop for a second. Hold hold on a second, five days a week. Can I maintain that when this feeling goes away? No way. There's no way I'll go to the gym five days a week, 30 days from now or 60 days from now when the inevitable happens where I become own motivated. Let me pick a schedule that I think I can stick to when this feeling goes away.

23:38Adam Schafer:What does that look like? And if I'm being quite honest, it's one day a week. One day a week is more than zero days, which is what I'm doing now. I'm going to go one day a week to the gym because I know what's going to happen. 60 days from now, I'm going to lose my motivation, but I think I can maintain the discipline of one day a week. And you stick with that. And over time, this turns into two days or three days or whatever, but you build upon previous discipline. This is the target. Be careful with falling in love with or worshiping or focusing solely on motivation. It's a great thing. Nothing wrong with it.

24:07I love it, but it will not serve you.

24:09Adam Schafer:Now here's the catch. Here's the part that's really cool. The more discipline you develop, the more motivation peaks its head in. So the more consistent you are with little bouts of discipline, the more experiences you're going to have with that feeling of motivation. So if you actually like being motivated, you still want to be disciplined. It gives you more of that.

24:29Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, what do you think the secret to becoming disciplined is? Because I feel like it's real easy to say that. I don't think that's what we're saying. It requires reps.

24:40Adam Schafer:Small reps. Small reps. That's it. It's a skill. So it's like learning how to play the piano or how to squat.

24:46Sal Di Stefano:It's interesting because it very much parallels, to me, integrity and like building your character. It's hard to do the right thing when nobody's looking. It's hard to go to work out when you don't feel like you want to do it. But then again, to be consistent, you have to really kind of introduce these immovable patterns one step at a time. And so this is my one immovable thing that I know I can stick with. and then just start with that. You're going to build on that. It naturally is going to build momentum, but for you to do that, that first step is integral.

25:24Adam Schafer:I had a client. So when I figured this out, it was a game changer for me as a trainer. My success rate with my clients, or actually to be more accurate, their success rate went through the roof in comparison to my previous clients or the previous ways that I would try to work with people. And I have one person in particular I'm thinking about. This woman came to me. She was referred to me by one of my doctor clients who had been in her ear about coming to train with me for a while. And this woman was like, I hate working out. I hate gyms. It's not my thing. But finally, you know, she had a good relationship with this doctor and she said, just go see this guy, Sal.

26:00Adam Schafer:He's really good. You'll like him, whatever. So she comes in to meet with me. First words out of her mouth. This is not an exaggeration. I shake her hand, introduce myself. First words out of her mouth. I'm not working out more than once a week. I'm not changing my diet. I'm not doing anything extra. Can you help me? Yes, I can help you. You're just going to come meet with me once a week and that's all we're going to do. Really? Is that really going to do enough to change anything about my health and my fitness? So, well, how much are you working out now? She said, I'm not working out at all. So it's more than what you're doing.

26:30Adam Schafer:It's more. I will show you that you're going to have improvements once a week. Do I need to do more than that? Nope. We'll stay there as long as you want. So I trained this woman once a week and I don't remember how long it was. It was a decent amount of time. It might've been a year, but she came to me and I made that experience good. I trained her appropriately, didn't overtrain her, didn't beat her up. We trained properly. She got stronger over the course of a year. She came to me and she said, Hey, are there some exercises I could do on my own? And that was the second step. Little by little, she became a very consistent person with her two to three days a week of working out.

27:01Adam Schafer:She started working on her diet, but we had to build it over time. Like any skill, you just don't sit at a piano and play a symphony right out the gates. It's you got to learn one little thing and it builds upon itself. And that's what discipline looks like.

27:15Sal Di Stefano:There's two huge things that I hear when I hear that story. One of them is starting really, really setting the bar really low as far as their expectations of what they can do. Right. So it's like commit to something so easy. You're like, I know for sure I can always do this. And then I'm sure what happened with her during that process is that she started to connect to the dots to how it felt. Obviously, strength went up, so there was an obvious indicator. 100%. But I think part of the secret to this, I mean, this is what keeps me going the way I go because I don't have any serious fitness goals that I'm trying to, both performance or aesthetic.

27:54Sal Di Stefano:Neither one of those are a focus of mine right now, yet I show up and do the thing. And I think what it is is that, I mean, I have connected the dots to all the other things that doing some sort of lifting weights does for me. My energy in that day is always so much better. I sleep way better. I'm a much better husband and father. I do more house chores around the house and help my wife out. I'm better at work. There's a lot of things that have nothing to do with performance or aesthetics or leanness or body or anything like that that I have connected the dots to. And it's like, and what's cool about all of those things is the program design, the progressive overload, exactly what, like, actually doesn't matter that much.

28:44Sal Di Stefano:It's literally, I just got to go in there. Show up. Show up, challenge my body a little bit with weights, and go home, and I'll reap a good portion of all those benefits. Now, yes, if I program correctly and I progressively overload, I'll see some extra added aesthetic benefits. I'll see some extra performance benefits. But it's like I have reached a level of those things that it's just like, man, I care so much more about the other things. That takes very minimal effort going in there to do that, to maintain and keep all that going.

29:17Adam Schafer:100%. You know, the next thing is you really have to – this is a tough one. But understand that grace is going to serve you. shame will never serve you when it comes to fitness. It'll never. Now, shame is different than guilt. So guilt says, you know, I did this bad thing. Shame says I am this bad thing or I am bad. Shame is one of the biggest enemies to fitness success. Why? Because you will stumble. Guaranteed, you will stumble. It's going to happen. If you shame yourself. Now, again, guilt is different. Guilt is, yeah, I made a mistake. Okay? That's admitting I made a mistake. Some people take being anti-shame to being no guilt.

29:56Adam Schafer:That's not true. Yes, you did this thing. It was off your program. You missed a week of working out. You ate a whole pizza when you could have had just two slices. Ah, man, I shouldn't have done that. That's fine. But when you turn that into beating the crap out of yourself, shaming yourself, using your workouts as a way to punish yourself, restricting yourself because I don't deserve anything better. And I deserve to feel this way. First off, you can't hit yourself into better health. It just doesn't work. Hating yourself is unhealthy. That's like smoking yourself into better lung health. It just doesn't, it just doesn't work.

30:28Adam Schafer:You give yourself grace. What does grace look like? You messed up. We'll start over and done. We're done with it. It's gone. Let's start again. This is what prevents the, I'm going to stop my diet and stop my workout for the next six months to five years. That's what stops us as grace. Shame, because here's what happens. Enough shame will eventually get you to run and you'll never want to do this again, or you won't do this until the shame wears off, which sometimes can take years. And that's definitely not good.

30:56Sal Di Stefano:You know, what's crazy that comes to mind is everybody's heard of placebo effect, but I don't know if many people have heard of the nocebo effect, which also too, it's just that sort of negative feedback that actually deteriorates your health. Like it's a part of that entire process. But yeah, I mean, hating yourself to show up. I mean, how long are you going to stick with that? I mean, the sustainability to that alone is rough. You'll run. This tip reminds me of the advice we give a lot to live callers at Colin. It's a common one that I go back to when it comes to reframing the you missed a day or you didn't have a good day eating or whatever it is.

31:40Sal Di Stefano:Instead of like looking at it as like, oh, I effed up, I screwed up this and then falling off the rails like everybody does and spiraling out of control. it's oh how many days in a row did i get of doing really well oh it was three days cool i'm back to zero let's tomorrow let's get back on it let's see if i can get to four days and then oh you hit four or five days in a row something happened instead of again beating yourself up it's oh man i made five days i got two more than i did before start over again let's see if i can get to six days and and reframing those inevitable setbacks and you know not perfect days which are going to happen in this process as an opportunity for you to get better the next time, that's having grace.

32:24Sal Di Stefano:That's having grace with yourself and reframing this as not a negative, oh my God, I'm such a terrible, I'm such a fat ass. I can't do it. Like instead of beating yourself up, it's, hey, I did, I got a few days in a row and it had no mistakes. Let's see if I can get one more of those days in a row and just keep playing that game. And before you know it, you become the person who can string 60, 90 days.

32:47Adam Schafer:This is the key to being a good personal trainer coach, by the way, is understanding how to communicate this. Because when your clients, this is how we train our trainers, why they're so successful. When you look at the success rate of the clients that work with our trainers, as defined by getting results, sticking around, being consistent, and wanting to stick around. So these are big parameters for what success is. Some people think success is just losing weight or just getting in shape. That's part of it. The other part of it is, can they maintain it? Do they want to maintain it? Do they love the experience?

33:17Adam Schafer:Are we making real lasting behavioral changes? This is why our trainers are so successful. I remember as a trainer when early days, my clients would hide things from me. This is common with clients and trainers. When your client's like, oh, I'm doing so well, but I had that cake or I missed that workout. And they won't tell their trainer. They won't tell their trainer because they're afraid of letting their trainer down. This makes it very difficult to train and coach people. Actually makes it impossible. If I don't know everything, how can I possibly coach you? I remember when I got good at this, Mike, I was the first person my clients would tell when they made a mistake because they knew they would get grace for me and we would get back on and go again.

33:57Adam Schafer:And it became so much more successful as a coach and trainer. Here's the last one. This piece right here is completely missing in the fitness space, which is just have fun. Like enjoy.

34:09Sal Di Stefano:How do we get so far away from this?

34:11Adam Schafer:Try to enjoy the process. Here's a, look, there's a category of people that will always be fit and healthy because they just have fun doing. They enjoy the hell out of it. Yeah. They just have so much fun doing active things. Yeah. You probably know someone like this in your life. They're like an older person. They're always fit. Not like they have a structured workout, but they're always doing something active. They're gardening. They're hiking. yeah whatever they're doing it with friends they're just having a blast they're with their grandkids it's like dude have fun if you're having fun you'll always want to do it you know the only

34:44Sal Di Stefano:time that i see this doesn't work well or this conflicts is when somebody is chasing aesthetics and leanness and wants to have fun so that's like have fun works when you fall in line with health discipline grace performance that way it's a it's a great way to chase all those things but when you are focused on an aesthetic and a look, but then you also want to get it from playing basketball or you want to get it from running marathons. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. And then you have this inner struggle. So it's always, which is always a conversation I have with somebody who, you know, tells me, I love to run marathons or I love playing basketball.

35:24Sal Di Stefano:And I'm like, cool, keep doing that. That's going to keep you healthy and fit.

35:28Adam Schafer:How many of those people would keep doing it if they could snap their fingers and look the way they wanted? Yeah.

35:33Sal Di Stefano:Stop. Right. Yeah. So like Having fun means you do it no matter what. That's right. And that's my point is that some people, I'm having fun. I like to do these marathons. So I thought, yeah, but you're doing it because you want the leanness part out of it. And so that's why you do it. You're doing it for the wrong reasons. You should do it regardless of how you look or not look and not connect those two things. That's when it tends to follow. All right.

35:55Adam Schafer:I'm going to change directions here because I just got to comment again on every once in a while we'll be introduced to a product or a method or something. This is rare, by the way, this rarely happens, but it's a product or something that, uh, all of us, especially me is not just skeptical of, but immediately I dismiss it. Like this is crap. This is not going to work. This is whatever. Hocus pocus, get this out of my face. Well, I did that a while ago, uh, with super patch because they sent us these patches that were non-transdermal, no medicine, no supplements in the patch. It was literally the patch itself that was purported to cause all these changes.

36:38Adam Schafer:And I'm like, that sounds - Triggers some response magically. That sounds a lot like a placebo and I'm not interested. And they're like, dude, just look at the studies. So I'm like, oh, you got studies. Let me see these studies. They're like 15 studies, controlled, peer-reviewed, randomized, like high quality studies. the one that really like piqued my interest was the one on pain and the one on sleep uh because the the they worked as effectively like the pain one worked as effectively as like ibuprofen well anyway i just they just keep blowing me away uh i was on a and i'll tell you a little bit more about this later but i was on a camping trip and i didn't bring the sleep patches from super patch uh and uh you know sleep is always not that great camping anyway but i got home put the sleep patch on and boy does it make a difference i also have friends that measure their sleep with like aura rings and stuff and they've had the patch on have the patch off i'm like no i can

37:32Sal Di Stefano:tell the difference so we just feel more of a deeper sleep like better refreshing yeah wake up

37:37Adam Schafer:it doesn't put me to sleep it's not like a sleepy they have a sleep one and a rem one don't they

37:41Sal Di Stefano:they have both no that is the same one same one oh oh there's a calm and a calm is different So you wear it overnight. They have a common REM one.

37:48Adam Schafer:You just put it on, go to bed.

37:49Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

37:50Adam Schafer:And your REM score will go up. Well, yeah. Measure it with your brain.

37:53Sal Di Stefano:Because Aura actually measures your REM. That's right. So you can see your REM. And so that's what I did when we first did it. I mean, that and the pain were the two that sold me. Yeah. Yeah, once I saw that. Because one, I track Aura consistently. And so I saw a measurable difference. And then the pain one, like I said. And I didn't know the studies. I remember describing it to you. I said, I gave you my scoring, right?

38:16Adam Schafer:The pain goes from a nine to a five.

38:18Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, which you're like, that's mathematically exactly what the study says. It compares it right to like what, and it feels, the best example I have is anyone who's ever had any sort of like pain and they take an Advil. It's like Advil doesn't like - Doesn't erase the pain. Yeah, it doesn't erase it. You know, it doesn't numb you like a hydrocodone or something like that. It literally just, it dulls the pain. It dulls the pain and makes it more bearable and can make a significant difference for somebody who's in pain. And that's what it feels like.

38:45Adam Schafer:This is a whole new field of research. This is haptic technology, which is wild.

38:49Sal Di Stefano:It's wild. It's funny because, like, you know, I got the pleasure of going to the Atlanta Falcons training camp. And so I got to go behind the scenes and, like, talk to a lot of the coaches there and the trainers. And, you know, obviously I can get into all the, you know, crazy, sophisticated, like, systems and everything they have. But like I was, they're asking me cause they were like curious, like all these partnerships we have and all this stuff. And like, well, what's, you know, what's like kind of the latest cool thing. I'm like, you know, we do get like opportunities to meet like cool companies and owners of companies.

39:21Sal Di Stefano:And I was like, you know, this super patch is something to really, you know, pay attention to. It's like, I wouldn't have ever, you know, thought it had any validity because, you know, it's just like you described, but you know, like all these studies coming out for performance I said, it's something to look into. And they were like all geeking out about it. So we'll see. Yeah.

39:38Adam Schafer:How was that, by the way, going out there? It was so fun. It was, it was. So were you in their like training camp? You were like there.

39:44Sal Di Stefano:We were there. Yeah. So Beth, you know, our caller that, you know, invited us and whatnot, like it was so great. She's such a great host and showed me like pretty much every behind the scenes part of the facility possible. got to see like you know like just man they really baby these guys like everything you think even we have like our haircut kind of set up with a barbershop they have like such a sick barbershop in there to like get their haircuts like you know they have like this whole like leather seat almost like a first class you know when you sit first class get these like really cool leather seat like they had that for each locker is basically that have their own screen and then And they have stuff to literally dry their clothes in there.

40:33Sal Di Stefano:So it has fans in there. So everything doesn't smell bad. That's cool. Dude, it looks like a lounge, like some Vegas lounge. And you're just like, what, dude? These guys. But I mean, I spent most of the time in the actual gym. Of course. Because I was geeking out on how they train everybody. Everything you could think of that was cool. Like they had, you know, really nice squat racks. They had, it was surprising me, actually, they had a ton of the stick mobility sticks and they were all warming up with them. They had this big screen that it was cool because they had, it had examples of like specific warmups that they could kind of choose from.

41:15Sal Di Stefano:But I mean, to the level of degree of like individualization, they all have their own iPads. So when you sign on and they bring you on, they give you an iPad and it basically has all your biomarkers. It uploads you. You get an assessment from a physical therapist. They kind of do all the background checks of any discrepancies. What was cool was like for me geeking out back when I created Axon and tried to do this whole thing with like, you know, like measuring people's abilities, their output for force output. So they have they actually have a machine that they were like checking their soleus output.

41:59Sal Di Stefano:And so that way, too, they could like prescribe, you know, a better warm up, a better workout based off the soleus. And then they would do this on specifics for somebody who had, you know, like some discrepancies already. And like, again, this is all part of the screening process and it like uploads it and then they can adjust. So they have like a template for like a block training that everybody has for that specific week. But then like they go in, first of all, the physical therapist can go on and modify it. Then the trainer can go on and modify it to individualize it. And then they just, even if you're a new player, they'll just take all that, you know, like get you through the screen process, put the iPad on the rack you're going to work out.

42:42Sal Di Stefano:And then they just step up, you know, what's my workout? Boom. And then they do it.

42:47Adam Schafer:Oh, that's so cool.

42:47Sal Di Stefano:I was like, this is next level, dude.

42:50Adam Schafer:That is so cool.

42:51Sal Di Stefano:It's pretty crazy. I wonder how much is being monitored on there. Like you remember how when we interviewed Corey and the volume of steps and movement. Yes. Okay. So they also have a whole system. I think it's called Zebra. But it's these chips that they put on in their pads and everything else to measure their acceleration and output. And so, like, they call it, like, speed reps. So, like, the amount of volume of speed reps is what – and if you don't exceed or if you don't match your goal – so they set goals already for each person, you know, based on what they want them to exert. and so it's like if you don't hit that then you're running sprints no shit to hit your yeah hit your target wow that is okay so now they have the technology now how crazy is that it's crazy to measure the effort that they are giving yeah i mean that oh back in the days the coach would just catch you yeah yeah look at you and be like it's slide remove your ass it would be like that you know what i'm saying but then they get competitive like every day they have like a sort of leaderboard of like who's had the fastest reps you know and all that so you can kind of see it that's cool give feedback and i was blown away but then i wonder how much so i wonder too if they're using like aura rings or they're using stuff to monitor sleep quality and see how good they're because we know that that's one of the highest risk for injury so that would be cool if they're inputting data like that too or it's just like oh it looks like justin got a 55 score last night.

44:25Sal Di Stefano:We're going to tell him to back off his intensity today and his lifting. Yeah. It didn't look like they followed it for sleep, like outside of the train, but they also had like a secondary system with like these polar heart rate monitors. And so they could also measure a lot of their cardio output with that a little more specifically.

44:46Adam Schafer:Doug pulled up the, they're called zebra performance monitoring is what I think it's called. Doug, scroll down. I want to see what the system collects. This is the data that it collects. How fast a player runs, how far a player runs, how fast the football travels when thrown, how much the football spins, and where players are on the field at all times. Isn't that crazy? They're breaking it down to the most insane detail.

45:12Sal Di Stefano:The thing is, they're using the data. These coaches, it's a bit overwhelming because they have to take all of this information and then And like, it's complicated, but they want to simplify so each player's like, oh, I just do this.

45:27Adam Schafer:Let's see if Adam picks up on what I'm going with right here. So check this out. The public also gets to see these numbers during game broadcasts. Yeah, for betting reasons, bro. I wonder, I was just thinking that. I wonder if this is like tightly kept, like how they're practicing. Because if somebody got their hands on practicing data, you could literally be like, oh, no, I'm betting against the Broncos. Have you guys seen all the stuff that's going on right now?

45:52Sal Di Stefano:What's the, you've brought it up before. What's the betting, the huge betting platform that everyone's doing now that bets on everything? What's it called? I don't know. You know what it's called. It's like presidential run. You can bet on. I don't know any of them. Oh, I know what you're talking about, but I don't know the name. What's the insurance? It's called, come on, you guys. One of you guys has to know the name of it. Polymarket. Polymarket. All the shit that's going on with it.

46:16Adam Schafer:Because they bet on elections too.

46:18Sal Di Stefano:Everything. there's everything there's nothing that you can't not bet on it's like it poly markets bets on everything but there's so much uh there's a lot there's like there's a lot going on right now with lawsuits and and people that have inside tracks to things like really oh yeah yeah that's i just saw i just saw a thread on this and i went down the rabbit hole watching some of the stuff that's going on but look at all the things you can do on but you bet on bitcoin where it's going to go you can bet on i mean you could bet on anything literally everything you could possibly

46:48Adam Schafer:think of you can you can bet on speaking of tech did you guys see what happened this just happened in australia and this is just so wild that this actually happened so i'll pull up i gotta read to you guys what happened because um you know how many i don't know how many warnings are we gonna get about ai and what it could potentially do and how many how many warnings are we gonna get before people do anything. Trip off this. This is Australia's first known autonomous AI cyber attack. You ready for this? This guy used this AI agent and said, hey, can you book me a time? Like a very innocuous, like innocent thing.

47:31Adam Schafer:He's like, hey, to his agent, get me a time at the 9.30 spin class. So the AI agent went to the gym's website and saw that the spin class was full. So what do you think the AI agent did? Cancel somebody else? It hacked the gym and hacked their schedule, took someone off the roster and put them on. Do you guys know why this is crazy? That is crazy. He didn't tell his agent to do that. No. He didn't say anything. It took the initiative. It went on its own and hacked the gym. Because it's a good little worker. Yes. So what's crazy about this is like our systems are our security systems are basically designed around like like what are the probabilities someone's going to try and hack your gym to try to get us like nobody cares so it's like dude everything is going to have to be crazy secure oh yeah yeah over a simple thing i mean that's a

48:24Sal Di Stefano:that's a pretty good bet right there on like uh you're trying to bet on companies or things that are going to it's going to be a lot of these security companies internet security companies

48:32Adam Schafer:will have to go through dude it literally went on and hacked by itself i got your time sir 9 a.m Oh, cool. Thanks. A little bump. Yeah, dude.

48:42Sal Di Stefano:It's crazy. It makes some room. Are you guys watching, you know, a show, Lioness is out again. You guys watching it? I haven't started yet. I've been hating to get into it. I love it. I watched the first episode. It's good. Did you watch the first episode of this? The first season. Oh. I'm just getting into it. Oh, you're just now getting into it. That's really good. Oh, it's really good. So season two just started. Is it about all this kind of stuff? So what I like about it is they do kind of current stuff. So like season two is like Ukraine war stuff.

49:09Adam Schafer:Oh, it's like what's happening.

49:10Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. And it makes me actually really curious of like how accurate it is because something just didn't cross my mind, like how that war is being fought and everything. You showed me some stuff of like the drone footage.

49:24Adam Schafer:Dude, you can find this online. Okay.

49:26Sal Di Stefano:It's crazy. So that's what they say. The show is depicting and the way they describe it. So there's a scene in it that opens up. This isn't ruining the show. it's not like a big surprise um there's a scene where the cia agents uh cia fbi agents are meeting up with like the like navy seal guys or whatever that are like on the ground doing the stuff and of course the you got this battle of power of like who has to listen to who and the the seals that have been that have been working or delta i don't know which one what team it is is has been already on the ground fighting this war is basically talking shit to the cia people like you have no authority here because you've never trained for a war like this.

50:10Sal Di Stefano:It's like World War I meets Star Wars. So it's like trench wars with drone shit going on. And so there's scenes in there where they're fighting in trenches and they're literally that close combat, but then also using thousands of drones that are coming in and just dive bombing on. I saw one video.

50:33Adam Schafer:because people they post them the soldiers post them where there's like a soldier hiding in the bush and a drone will fly over him and then see him so you're seeing it from the drone's camera and it captures him and then he he looks up and sees it and then it just flies towards him and of course the screen cuts out because it probably like explodes yeah basically they show that these

50:54Sal Di Stefano:are just like you know hundred dollar amazon drones with c4 on it and they're just designed and they just come flying. So literally they're in hand-to-hand combat type stuff, and then all of a sudden thousands of drones, swarm of them coming over, and they're just dive-bombing on people. It's like so just wild to think that that's... Crazy. And I don't know how accurate, again, it is. I imagine it's probably somewhat accurate, or that was what it's like, but it tripped me out watching that. Wow, that's crazy. This season's good, though. So it's only got two episodes out, but they came out the gates pretty good.

51:27Sal Di Stefano:What's it say, Doug?

51:28Adam Schafer:Yeah. One drone often acts as the leader. It flies ahead to find and pick the target. Then the other drones in the group follow the leader and carry explosives. They dive into the target to blow it up. Many of these drones use artificial intelligence, so they can make choices on their own without a human flying them. Yeah. Yeah, that's not good. And they're cheap. Whatever. Cool. I think shooting nets up, right? Am I just thinking crazy? Yeah. Yeah. Just like fire a bunch of nets up there? Yeah. I don't know.

51:55Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, I don't even know how well. I mean, there's like thousands. yeah yeah it looked like i couldn't tell uh but look like they even had special new guns that would shoot yeah to shoot them like almost like they're like shotgun so they birdshot yeah birdshot type stuff so it's not yeah trying a single bullet like widespread yeah you want something that's gonna hit probably four or five of them at once or like that and so they were shooting different guns i was like oh that must be yeah it must be like a new gun that's designed for that.

52:24Adam Schafer:I'm going to take another left here. I was reading some studies on oil, on oils that are used in foods, but also in the same article they talked about fish oil because that's a popular supplement that people take. I'm taking mine consistently right now. Yeah, me too. Especially because we met with Dr. Cabral. Such an easy way to change your inflammatory profile. Such an easy way to do it is to supplement with fish oil. Well, Doug scored the best and

52:51Sal Di Stefano:he's the only one that's been super consistent with it.

52:53Adam Schafer:Yep. And you can, it's very predictable. You take high EPA fish oil for a month, you do a blood test, you see a difference. But I went online and I'm like, how many fish oils out there are rancid or not, you know, a hundred percent fish oil? A lot. I'm sure. Is it? A lot. Yeah, I'm sure. A lot. A lot of it's garbage because fish oil is such a popular supplement now. You can go to the grocery store and buy grocery store brand fish oil. It's super cheap. you can buy it anywhere and a lot of them are either not fish oil or they're bad it's rancid just because it's the food it's fish oil oil is an oil i remember somebody i used to work with

53:30Sal Di Stefano:nutrition lady and and she would poke a hole in it and then you'd smell it and it was like man quite a few brands yes rancid smell yep so kion uh people are like which was what's a good

53:41Adam Schafer:fish oil kion is like super super high quality super high quality i use that that's the one i'm

53:47Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, we have them here, so it's easy for me to take. Yes. And I don't get the fish burps from them. That's right. Yeah, I've had ones before. I'm like, ooh. Oh, dude, so along those lines,

53:57Adam Schafer:so they did a test on processed foods that say that they're made, I'll pull it up, with avocado oil or olive oil. You guys want to hear the fail rate? 48 out of 54 tested avocado oil products didn't have avocado oil.

54:16Sal Di Stefano:48 out of 54 way too many i saw that clip i saw that instagram clip somebody posted dude you know

54:23Adam Schafer:just stay away from processed foods i think that's just what we're gonna do yeah because it's all processed foods right it's like hey potato chips made in yeah avocado oil or just kidding yeah it's all it's all it's all crap it's all crap that sucks that sucks it does anyway i gotta tell you guys about this this potential purchase that i'm considering uh which you guys know me i'm not a big like buy things kind of person yeah but i went camping uh over the last four days and we used an rv uh and so i'm not a big camping guy obviously so i did it in the

54:52Sal Di Stefano:least camping way possible i've actually so i think it was so cool i went like looked it all up after you did it because i have never heard of what you did so here's what i did so if when you

55:04Adam Schafer:know if you know me personally you know this about me but like one of my big challenges is like um I place comfort and convenience way too high on the priority list. So if something's not comfortable to me, I don't want to do it, which prevents me from doing a lot of things. Unfortunately, camping being one-on-one, like you go camp in a tent, you're not comfortable. There's, you don't have all your, your conveniences camping. Yeah. And so I just don't do it. And, and it sucks because I know how valuable it is for like, for kids. It's just like, it's a good time. I love camping as a kid, but that's because mom and dad handled everything.

55:35Adam Schafer:Right. So my cousin, he has an RV and he's like dude let's go camping whatever so I'm like nah I'm not gonna do that and he goes you know you can have them drop an RV off you know like a big trailer off for you so I'm like really what do those things have like it has everything so that's what I did so they dropped off a trailer which is cool I was aware

55:51Sal Di Stefano:of forever you've been able to rent these yes you've been able to rent an RV or dude I went

55:57Adam Schafer:overboard I got like a 40 foot like this thing's like a monster yeah you had

56:01Sal Di Stefano:I saw you had like four anything that has like four pop outs or more you got a land yacht or what?

56:06Adam Schafer:It was a monster. Didn't have hookups. The place doesn't have hookups. So you still have to have a generator and you'll run out of water. But, you know, for me, it was a step towards, you know, and I was not comfortable. I still wasn't comfortable. It was still a little bit of anxiety around it. But my kids, man, had so much fun. I bet they loved it. Oh, so much that my son cried when we left. Really? Oh, wow. He cried for 30 minutes on the way home. I want to go back. I want to live there. I don't want to go home because just the The whole time, so there was me, my cousin Gabriel, Alex, my cousin Sepp, and my brother.

56:41Adam Schafer:So it was five of us, and we took this kind of campground, this circular campground. It's the best. And we all have little kids. Yeah. So for the kids, for us, it's like total safety. Like my kids could run off. Just run and be free. And as long as I see that they're near my cousin or whatever, I'm like, ah, whatever, they're fine, and I'm over here doing my thing. So the kids experience this great freedom. they the whole time they're running riding their bikes climbing playing they're coming together it's just such a wonderful time for the kids and so yeah you know and it took me like a couple days to like not be so anxious about the you know they don't have all the things that i'm used to type of deal so we get home and my wife and i are talking about this i'm like you know i need to challenge my comfort level and i need to gradually do it so i think if i bought like a motor home that i could that would probably be the next level.

57:32Adam Schafer:Cause I could do like, cause we're in California. There's a lot of places nearby. You could park a little motor home and have like a two or three. It goes like this boat. Yeah.

57:40Sal Di Stefano:Motorhome race simulator.

57:42Adam Schafer:Oh, three. Those are the three. Three. Yeah.

57:45Sal Di Stefano:Three worst investments that you can buy and never use. That's the order. Just so you know. Okay. So motorhome is right. The only thing worse is a boat. Yeah.

57:53Adam Schafer:But the thing is it takes a lot of space.

57:55Sal Di Stefano:Yeah. And it's way more than the other ones. Yeah.

57:57Adam Schafer:Well, what I would do, what I'm going to do, because 100%, I know that. I know the stats on that. Is we're going to do like two or three trips where we rent a motorhome first. Yeah. And then if it's like, we could do this. If you consistently, yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, like if we could do this and we're going to do this thing like often. That's smart. Then I'll do it. But we're going to do that first.

58:17Sal Di Stefano:I mean, so I've been around a lot of them. and the people that I have seen that actually get their money's worth are almost always retired and older. And they have decided that I'm going to travel the United States and this is what we're going to do.

58:36Adam Schafer:So my cousin uses his quite a bit, but he's got a couple things going for him. First off, he's self-employed, so he's got some flexibility there, and then his kids are homeschooled. Those are the two big blocks, right, is your job and your kids' school. sure so we could take off and yeah yeah i mean you kind of have that exactly yeah you can yeah i thought of that because our schedule here yeah you know it's fixed but relatively flexible yeah uh number so that's number one my kids are homeschooled and then number three where we live i looked up places that are within an hour that even have full hookups or partial tons tons everywhere they're all over everywhere so i'm like okay i'll try it out that's cool beach there's Beach ones all over the place.

59:15Adam Schafer:Go big greats. Were you guys? Were you guys? There's one near Felton. Were you guys at Bodega Bay?

59:19Sal Di Stefano:Were you guys where all those big shaded trees are? And then the beach is like walking right down in front of you? The beach was right there. Yeah, yeah. So we just had to cross a road. Yeah, I know right where you guys were at. Yeah, it's a great spot. That's a really cool place to go. It was awesome. Yeah.

59:32Adam Schafer:It was great. And yeah, everything's dirty. And people are laughing when I actually camp because they're making fun of me right now. Like, that's not camping. I know it's not camping. Yeah. But I got to start where I'm at.

59:43Sal Di Stefano:and i'm over here now what we did like mr what we did growing up was the the parents got that and then us kids had to camp in tents now obviously your kids are so little that you don't do that but at one point you would do my parents had a tent trailer we had like yeah the tents outside yeah that's that's eventually what you do is that mom and dad have that and then the kids get which the kids actually normally like that once they get to a certain age they can rough it yeah yeah once you get to you they want their own little little thing and so you get them their own tents and they camp right outside the rv and you you're inside the rv once you have like an apnea mask and you have like bro that was a thing you have all these things you know as an adult that you're

1:00:21Adam Schafer:like oh man like yeah it becomes less appealing it's yeah but it was it was you know like i said the kids is what's motivated me because if it was just me like i don't know if i would ever do it but to see the value that it brought my they did yeah they didn't sit down at all well i would go The whole time. You'd love to just watch them run. Dude, they were having so much fun.

1:00:40Sal Di Stefano:Did you guys, because this is something I could totally get in with you. I would love to do this. And I would do the same thing. I would just rent one. Because what makes the more and more fun is like you guys book that for next year. And we take on another two more sites. That's right. And then before you know it, we dominate the whole camp areas. All family and friends. We get into the competitive Yosemite places where everybody does it like, you know. Oh, my God. It's impossibly going to get a good spot there.

1:01:07Adam Schafer:This is a whole world I'm not even aware of.

1:01:09Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, it is. And I think, too, COVID probably accelerated a lot of that where it's hard to get, like, passes ahead of time. Now, you have to, like, book it, like, a year, two years ahead of time. Oh, yeah, that's why I said that. Like, if you guys like doing that and that was a good spot, what we do is you book now for next year. Every year we would do this because we would go, we roll, like, 50-something deep. So we'd take a whole entire camp area like that over. and it was so fun because it was every you knew everybody you know everybody and so your kids can just go everywhere so they're running all over to all the campsites and different things and the adults are having like we we had theme nights every night where there was like a you know it was greek night and then this was like hawaiian night it was like and then and different keep different families were in charge of putting on the theme night and so like yeah see for me

1:01:57Adam Schafer:it's like for the for two things it's the for the kids i saw how much value it brought them and i'm like man i gotta do this for them and then for me i gotta do it because it'll challenge this thing that i have with comfort like i have to be able to get over this whole issue with like i gotta

1:02:12Sal Di Stefano:have all the stuff that i'm used to type of deal well you know they say i i wish i remember the exact stat on it i remember seeing it was actually really surprising on like your your kid will forget birthday presents they'll forget all but they that camping trip they'll remember that camping trip. It's like forever. And I mean, I, and I know that firsthand from like, I've, I've forgotten so much of my childhood, but I could, I could recall every, every camp year. I can remember every camping trip that we went to.

1:02:39Adam Schafer:It was, it was so great to see all the kids play. And then my brother was there with his boys and they're just, those kids run on nuclear reactors, but his oldest, his five-year-old is so kinesthetically gifted. It's wild. So he's, First of all, he's five. Not only does he ride a two-wheel bike like he's been riding for his whole life, my brother bought him a mini BMX bike for five-year-olds. My brother went and got him a good one because he loves it. Bro, this kid flies on that thing. Nobody teaches him anything. I'm like, did you teach him anything? He's like, no, he's constantly doing tricks on his own.

1:03:16Adam Schafer:He'll ride, take his legs off the pedals. He'll take his hands off the pedals. He'll kick the back out. He'll skid. He'll try to jump things. So he fell like three or four times while we were there. So you'd hear him crying. You'd run over there, you know, put a bandaid on him. I'm like, oh, he's probably done. My brother's like, no. Sure enough, he jumps on the bike and just 100 miles an hour. At one point, my brother is like, okay, he's going too dangerous. Because he was doing stuff that you're like, this kid, we've got to be careful. It's so wild. The kids are different like that. Dude, my brother tells him, he goes, that's it.

1:03:45Adam Schafer:You're not going to ride the bike for an hour. Oh, my God, dude. He like devastated him. Meltdown. Oh, please. He's crying. I'm like, oh my God, this kid. Don't take it away from me. But I have never seen a five-year-old so like. He's like, kinesthetically gifted like that. He was doing things on that bike.

1:04:01Sal Di Stefano:That's my godson and my goddaughter like that, dude. My best friend. I mean, the give and take is that they're also terrors. If they're not moving, they're not doing something, they're getting into something. You have to keep them busy and doing that stuff. But boy, they're talented. He's got them now. He sent videos yesterday of you out there doing foot drills with my godfather. yeah dude backpedaling and shipping karaoke drills and everything like that i'm just like oh my god dude so such a i mean and him and max are only one year apart they're not like five years apart they're barely apart i'm like getting max to go do foot drills would be hilarious doing this what are you doing dad you know my hope right now is the swimming thing because he's taking to the pool like a fish right now so that's that's where i'm like okay we this could be the thing because he's all about it right now.

1:04:51Sal Di Stefano:He'll swim, he'll swim all day and dive in the bottom and picking all the coins off and holding his breath forever. And so it's like, okay, well maybe, maybe this will be our thing. That's good.

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1:05:48Adam Schafer:That's the health of your blood vessels. It really does work. Go check it out. Go to tryjoymode.com slash mindpump. Use the code mindpump at checkout for 20 % off your first order. Back to the show. Our first caller is Thais from California.

1:06:03Sal Di Stefano:Hi, Thais. Hi, Thais. Hey, guys. Hello. How you doing? Oh, my gosh. I'm here.

1:06:10Adam Schafer:How can we help you? Okay. Well, I will certainly ramble if I don't read the email. So I'm going to do that and remind myself that I did want to say thank you guys so much. You've definitely made a huge impact on my life. And I feel super privileged to be able to be here with you and have this opportunity. So my name is Thais. I'm 48 years old, a single mom, a massage therapist, and an avid Mind Pump listener. Before anything else, I want to thank you for the life-changing impact you've had on me. Your content has brought a much more grounded and wholesome understanding of what it means to be a healthy human.

1:06:57I also want to mention that I recently finished three months of coaching with Zach from your Mind Pump team. And while I expected to be supported through reverse dieting and appropriate training, what I actually received was much more impactful and healing for me. I really started learning how to listen to my body's cues, nourish myself, respect the needs and timeline of my unique situation. Zach was insightful, compassionate and wise beyond his years. And it was one of the most valuable investments that I've made.

1:07:36Sal Di Stefano:I love hearing that. Wonderful. Thank you. Love hearing that. So now that our coaching has ended, I would love your advice on how to structure my training. I'm experiencing ongoing pain and tightness that does not seem to match the minimal amount of training that I'm doing. And I hope that you can help me understand how you might approach this. I'm going to give you a little background on me and my story because I think that it adds to the whole situation. As a teenager, I weighed 275 pounds. I struggled with compulsive overeating and binge eating after losing 100 pounds when I was 16. I spent years chasing health and aesthetics through a lot of different types of restrictive diets.

1:08:30Not so much exercise, but I did start dancing back then and I just started walking everywhere I went. But it was more I associated food, you know, with my body. At 24, I entered an emotionally abusive relationship. It lasted over 20 years. After my son was born 16 years ago, I developed chronic insomnia that has followed me ever since. It was, you know, really bad when he was first born, like I was sleeping two hours a night, up the entire night, just freaking out, and then finally falling asleep around 6 a.m. and then he'd wake up two hours later that lasted about eight months and um my sleep is a lot better than that now but it's still I still struggle um okay so uh yeah so I learned to survive on very little sleep I showed up for my kid you know I did what I had to do to push through exhaustion and ignore what my body was telling me so I really learned how to hit override and live from that place.

1:09:39Two and a half years ago, I finally left that relationship and have been rebuilding my life ever since. A year after leaving that, I rediscovered my love of dance. Movement was a really important part in my weight loss journey and became a passion until I got lost in this abusive relationship. Um, and so let's see. Yeah. After about a year and a half ago, uh, I was dancing. I also discovered strength training at that time. I fell in love with it. Um, and I also fell into the trap of under eating over training. Um, I did, you know, I, I guess I lost another, not that the weight on the scale matters so much, but I did lose another like 45 pounds in that year.

1:10:35I had gotten quite heavy again. And let's see, by the end of 2025, I had gone from 180 to 135. I was eating around 1600 calories a day, lifting almost daily, and was constantly sore and exhausted. I was sleeping only four to five fragmented hours each night, but kept pushing because I was terrified of losing my progress. I want to add in there that like a big piece for me that drove my desire to like start moving my body again was that ever since I had lost the initial weight. when I was a kid, you know, I was left with all the baggy skin, you know, the stretch marks and the loose skin. And I just felt, even though I had gotten small, I always felt gross.

1:11:30You know, I felt kind of hideous when I would look at myself. And that never changed. And it was about two years ago where I was seeing my body again and feeling those same old feelings and was finally like, you know, I've done all the food stuff. I've gotten really small. I went on a candida cleanse at one point, got down to 116 pounds, but I still saw the same thing. It was a bunch of flesh and bone. And so it was two years ago that I was like, you know, screw this. I'm, I'm going to see what I can do to fix my body finally, you know, and that's when I started dancing again and swimming and then I learned about strength training so that's what pushed that and I did get really strong in a year but I was over training under eating and losing some momentum although I would keep going to the gym but I was getting to that place where you know I I didn't have the same kind of drive and excitement that I had in the beginning um so finding you guys changed my perspective and um that was my sister actually introduced me to you she's been listening to you guys for years but I think that I first listened to your podcast um a year ago December or something like that and I've been listening daily ever since um so by March of this year I'd increased my calories to about 1900.

1:13:03I was still frightened to reduce training and was still in a significant pain cycle. I started working with Zach in May. I knew what you guys would tell me. I heard other people on your show with similar kind of experiences, and I heard what you guys were telling them, but I knew I couldn't do it on my own. So I did end up working with Zach. We increased my intake to around 2 ,400 calories a day and dramatically reduced my training volume. So we were landed in like a muscle mommy 15 Thai style protocol, prioritizing mobility and shifted the goal away from the aesthetics towards restoring my sleep and recovery.

1:13:48So really, I feel like my work with him was really all about recovery and sleep. And that's the main thing that I gained is that that's the number one goal. And that it's not about beating myself up and chasing some aesthetic thing, you know, even though I'm not sleeping, even though like realizing that I've been living in this place of survival and override and not listening to myself. So what a gift, you know, what a blessing that was. And I could not have done it on my own. I was still weighing myself daily. My scale has been away for three months now. I haven't stepped on it. Wonderful, yeah.

1:14:27I know I've gained weight, but, and both, you know, I know I've gained muscle and I've gained some fat back, but I'm, my, my focus now is on this restoring my health, you know, from the inside out, becoming a vigorous, enlivened, restored version of myself. And so anyhow, yeah, I say I realized at this time that for years what I thought was self-care was really self-bullying disguised as self-improvement. And that is true. Today, my priorities are very different. I still care about building the muscle, becoming stronger, fixing the skin. like that's the one thing when I did get down when I got really lean and had built a significant amount of muscle the skin that like if I were to have it surgically removed would be forty thousand dollars that I don't have um but for the first time in my life it didn't really matter because the muscle was showing through and the skin just seemed to firm up and a little bit of like it just didn't show up as much it felt really good um so I I do still struggle with that a bit but I'm letting it go because I know that's not the priority and I could potentially get back there um so okay doing my best not to ramble um so for so much of my life I've lived in survival um I honestly don't know what it feels like to live from a balanced mental emotional and physical place and that's really what I'm working on right now.

1:16:05But here's where I'm hoping for your guidance. Even with eating more, which has been so much fun, I like, I'm not afraid of food right now and that feels so amazing. That's like one of the most healing experiences. Zach even pushed me to eat more carbs. He was like, you know, and I've been frightened of carbs. So like having a big old plate of potatoes with eggs for breakfast has been like, just just deeply nourishing it feels so good um but even with eating more training much less and sleeping a little bit better still very much a work in progress but i am i'm doing better i wake up with sore muscles tight tissues stiff joints i often feel physically depleted which i know that makes sense with the lack of sleep but like the pain um i'm sore every day and every night despite the reduced workload.

1:16:58And I feel more physically uncomfortable now than I did when I was overtraining. The other important piece of this puzzle is my profession. So I'm a massage therapist in private practice. My business has grown from one client a week three years ago to averaging about 22 clients each week. And that's 22 clients. Some of those are hour sessions. Some of those are 90-minute sessions. On my busiest days, I could perform up to about six hours of hands-on work. I'm still on my feet in between that because I'm cleaning up the space, preparing for the next client. I love what I do. My clients love the work I provide.

1:17:42I help people. um i also do uh put focus on good body mechanics um but it's still hours of physically demanding work not requiring strength stability endurance and sustained focus um i also want to add that from being overweight like when i was you know my body was still growing my arches are fallen my knees are not need like i've been working on these things um but i think that the structure of my body might also have to do with where I experience discomfort. So I say here are my current stats. I'm 48. I'm 5 '8". I'm probably around 150 pounds at this point, about 2 ,400 calories a day. I do get 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 steps a day.

1:18:33I work four and a half days a week, which is four to six hours of massage. Two days off. One of those days I'm still doing stuff because I'm like washing 22 sets of sheets and, you know, running errands and stuff, but not working in the office. So given everything I've shared, I'm wondering how to structure my training. I will say that last week I took the week off. I did like a deload week, you know, hoping that that might help to give me some relief. And I think that it did. And I did not think I was going to get on a call with you guys. So I was like, all right, you're just going to have to like figure out what to do.

1:19:15And so basically I've been doing mobility work every day. I'm planning to keep that up even the days that I do go to the gym. And then I decided to try only lifting on my days off. So instead of breaking it up into small workouts every day to do two days of full body. And so I'm wondering what you guys think would be my best force of action. Restoring my sleep is still my highest priority. maintaining my strength is really important for me and also you know working on just mobility functionality being able to move how I want to move I do enjoy dancing and and there's so much I'd like to be able to do and contribute and you know I just want to be the strong healthy clear version of myself and it's been I'm feeling really challenging like I'm I'm in a kind of catch 22 between recovery sleep and um staying you know on top of my fitness yeah i feel you and

1:20:27Adam Schafer:i really appreciate you calling in this is going to really help a lot of people who are watching this um so i have a few questions for you if that's okay first off you're kicking ass you're

1:20:36Sal Di Stefano:doing really well i just want to point that out you're doing really good i just want to point out like how far you've come and what you've accomplished and where you're at you're doing incredible.

1:20:45Adam Schafer:Thank you so much. The pain that you feel is general, it's kind of stiffness and soreness kind of all over. Yeah, lately, lately it has been. And there can be specifics too. It's different. Like there are specific pain points that I think are more about my, my structure. Like I do get intermittent pain in my shoulders with pushing. Like I feel like I cannot do pushups right now, because it's painful. Um, and doing any overhead pressing, I really have to adjust my scapula before I do that and make sure they're in the right position. Um, I can get up there, but getting there can hurt until I get to this point.

1:21:27And then when I press, um, I can get more comfortable with that. Uh, and then, you know, I go in and out of having very specific knee pain that does come along with inflammation.

1:21:38Adam Schafer:Um, so, and yeah, yeah, there's a couple of things that we'll point to. And, um, first we got to get this out of the way. You've had things like nutrient levels tested to make sure your vitamin D levels are normal and anything and all that. Have you checked that? Yeah. Um, I did. I don't know if you guys have heard of the whole functional, I can't remember the name of it, but I had a whole mess of labs done and I do believe D was in there and I think that I'm pretty much in normal ranges. I also take D I take 10 ,000 a day right now. Okay. We're fine there. Okay. So a couple of things I just want to point out.

1:22:13Adam Schafer:Um, and it was something you said earlier, uh, that I want to kind of go back to. You said now with the reduced volume, uh, and the, you know, kind of better sleep, you feel like you're almost like feeling more pain than you did when you were over training and, and just running yourself ragged. You said that, right? So here's what kind of happens in those situations, right? Right. Sometimes we train the heck out of ourselves because we're running. We're running from something and we don't give our chance, our bodies or ourselves a chance to feel. You probably know this better than anybody in the profession that that with the profession that you do.

1:22:50I'm sure you've had people on your table finally get a chance to relax.

1:22:54Adam Schafer:You work on them and then they cry. and they're like, what's going on? Why am I tearful? It's like, well, you slowed down just long enough for you to allow yourself to feel. And so it's not shocking to me that now that you're allowing your body to heal, that you're treating yourself better, that you feel more. There's a little bit of safety there. There's some safety there that now you're kind of safe to perceive the pain differently. Whereas before you had to shut it off so you could survive. Does that make sense? That does make sense, yeah. Okay. Here's the other thing. You're massaging a lot.

1:23:34Adam Schafer:I just, that's the direction I'm going. Massage therapy is very physical. And the injury rate with massage therapists is through the roof. You know this better than anybody. But I've employed massage therapists and the injury rate is, it's very active. You are in there, you're moving. And if you have to have good biomechanics and body positioning, but even with that it's a very demanding physical job it's also very emotionally demanding because you're not just putting your you're you're not just using your body but you're also feeling the person's emotions that's what makes you probably what makes you a good massage therapist so that's a lot of volume so you've got a lot of movement volume there you've also got you got out of a a long-term abusive relationship.

1:24:21Adam Schafer:It's only a couple of years out. You've also got your sleep still, although better is something you're kind of working on, but I'm going to point out it's been a few months and you've gone so far already, but I'm also going to point out something that might make you, uh, might be a little bit more encouraging and a little bit more revealing to you. How many years, how long did you bully yourself? How many years was that? Would you say?

1:24:48Uh, Let's say 32.

1:24:53Adam Schafer:And you are, you are three months into taking care of yourself. Yeah. It's going to take, it's going to take some more time. Yeah. So you've been in this dark tunnel. You kind of see some light, but it's a bit confusing. Keep moving towards the light. Like you're doing the right stuff. You're doing the right stuff. Keep moving in that direction. You're going to have to take care of yourself for a while, actually for the rest of your life. and it's going to change. What that looks like is it's going to change. But right now, what it looks like is being gentle, giving yourself grace. And here's the places that I think you should lean.

1:25:28Adam Schafer:I don't think you should lean into workout and diet. Those are actually secondary, maybe even third. I think what you should lean into is community and joy. You mentioned dancing several times. I think that's, I think you should lean into that. do you have a good community around you of people that really know you and do life with you or do you are you a little bit isolated because of life and stress and all that stuff yeah I mean the truth is is that um I'm I'm pretty I am locked into a wonderful little community but it's all online um right now uh but it's been really fun and I've been um with them for a year so it's really great like to have that consistency.

1:26:13And, um, however, and, and, and I, you know, exactly what you're saying I've intuited and there've been a number of areas where I have sought out simple joy in my life. Um, because I've always been, you know, just pushing myself to become do better. Like everything has been about self-improvement. So I have been getting into, um, Ikebana, which is like Japanese flower arranging that brings me a lot of joy bonsai going to the volunteering at the bonsai gardens dance however yes all that being said I'm a single mother of a 16 year old child who has you know a lot of he really needs me I'm very much alone in that and I don't get any financial support so you know it doesn't leave me a lot of time and there are beautiful people in my life, but you know, most of them are busy with their families because of the time we're all in.

1:27:10So I don't get together with people often. And I do often feel quite alone. Um, and you know, I just, uh, I have found certain things. I've found some things and I I've been reaching out a little bit more.

1:27:24Adam Schafer:So, so what I'm going to say is going to be difficult, uh, but you can't take care of yourself by yourself. We, and I'm, I'm going to be preaching to the choir right now. because you know this, but you need people, physical people in your life that you do life with. You need that. It's going to help so much with healing. If the touch that you experience most weeks is you helping other people, but nobody really doing that for you, there's a big imbalance there. And there's a few places I can, there's a few things I can recommend that I think might help. I don't know how open you are to some of them.

1:28:04Adam Schafer:The easiest one that typically has built-in communities and they value community is local churches. This is what really good churches do, is you go in, you don't even have to be a part of the faith. You could just say, I want to be a part of the community and I need people around me. And you would be surprised and shocked at how many times these people are just, this is what they want to do. So that's one example. Another example is volunteering or try to find a group. I think this will do so much for you, Tyus. It will do so much for you in pain. It's going to help you with sleep, with recovery, because right now you're doing it all by yourself.

1:28:40Adam Schafer:And it sounds like for 30 years you've bullied yourself and then taken care of everybody else and not really done it for yourself nor allowed anybody else or had anybody else that's really done that for you.

1:28:54Sal Di Stefano:i just want to echo what sal is saying that i i think he's on the right track of the thing because one of the things for right away what i said to you is what a great job you're doing such a good job on the exercise nutrition piece you really are and the mobility mobility exercise like you're really checking a lot of that it's it's just a matter of time now the if i could were to get a little more uh technical on the like exercise selection thing one of the things i know about a massage therapist is it's very anterior driven. So you're doing a lot of pushing, which is you already noticed that when you do pressing movements.

1:29:27Sal Di Stefano:And so I could modify the workout a little bit to be more posterior driven. So it, you know, just because we have a program laid out and we, it's designed to be balanced kind of for everybody, you're a unique situation. And so I might do less shoulder press, chest press stuff, and I'd be doing more rows. Yeah. More rows, more hamstring, more posterior. And I think that would help a little bit maybe with some of the aches and pains and stuff like that. So that's probably the most technical thing if I were to address any sort of nutrition exercise that you're doing. But I really think you're doing a really good job there.

1:30:01Sal Di Stefano:It's more leaning into Sal's direction that I think is going to serve you the most and time and just simply just more time of taking care of yourself. We're just now heading into this stage of our life.

1:30:14Adam Schafer:I have a really strong, um, you know, you know, feeling that you understand some of the stuff I've saying, cause you probably, um, recommended it to a lot of your clients. Uh, massage therapists tend to be very in tune with this, with other people. You know how important that is. Um, and oftentimes people come to you, not just for the massage, but for the connection and the touch, uh, that if you look at the data, I don't know how, how important data is for you, Tice, but for me, data tends to convince me. If you look at the data on loneliness and its contribution to pain, insomnia, hormone imbalance, and any chronic, it's remarkable.

1:30:54Adam Schafer:It is remarkable. And you're coming out of a part of your life where, like, you need this. Well, you needed it before, but now you're like, I really need, here's the challenge okay we live in a society now where it used to be more automatic you you were out around people just because that's what you had to do when you walked to the store you went now it's so easy to not be around people and be isolated and everything has to be scheduled that you have to go out of your way to kind of do this but i think the dance i think finding a way even if it's outside your comfort zone i mentioned a church you might think to yourself like i have nothing to do with that faith.

1:31:32Adam Schafer:It doesn't make any sense to me, but they do such a good job with community because it's a part of what they do that you could go to one and you could literally say, look, I, I'm not, you know, maybe this is you, I'm not a part of this faith or what, but I want to be around people and I need community. And I just got out of a bad relationship and I'm not really doing life with anyone except for people online. Do you guys have any groups like that? And I guarantee you, they're going to say we do. And you go and you just love on people and have them love on you. And I think that'll make such a difference for you.

1:32:04Adam Schafer:Everything else you're doing, stay the course. You're not doing anything wrong. Stay the course. It's gonna take some time though. You're only three months in. You're looking at a year or two or three years of this kind of building up process. And it's gonna feel better and better as you go through it. But the challenge is this though, okay? When you break out of an abusive relationship, and right now I'm not referring to the one you were talking about. I'm talking about the abusive relationship you had with exercise and nutrition. When you break out of it, it feels insecure because that's what you knew for so long.

1:32:38Adam Schafer:So that's all you know, as bad as it was, as abusive as it was towards you, that's what you knew. So now you're moving into something else and it feels like you're floating with no tether. Like, okay, I starting to feel better. What am I supposed to do? Do I go more? Do I go harder? I don't know what I'm supposed to feel right now. And so it's going to be a process of getting used to what it feels like to do it right. It's just going to take some time. And you're doing really well. What you said over the last few months with bumping your calories and what I think you're, I mean, perfect. I wouldn't change it.

1:33:12Yeah.

1:33:13Adam Schafer:I'm doing good. So here's what I want to do, Tice. I don't feel comfortable letting you just disappear back into the ether. I'd like to have you come back on in 30 days so we could do a little bit of this coaching. I would love that. Okay. Let's have you come back on in 30 days. Okay. How does what I say, does any of it resonate to you? Is there any resistance? Does it feel like? You know, there's resistance with like going to a church. So I'm Jewish and I have been a part, I was very much a part of the local Jewish community, a couple of them here. uh but that's like my husband's my ex-husband's like okay uh it's just been no like it's just been so uncomfortable so it's not really my space anymore I love those people you know um not to mention that I'm just holding my life a little bit differently I can say that um I mean spirituality in general is an important part of my life but um you know finding the right place where I feel I I don't have anything against churches you know whatsoever but it doesn't feel like I don't know something doesn't feel like it's not my it just doesn't feel like my my place um I do feel you know community when I go to the gym uh that feels funny to say but like I'm I do I I go there even for my mobility every day I go there at like 6 a.m.

1:34:40and I just like work on the green and I know people and I see the same people and like we check in and we talk and you know so I do get some of that human interaction there um but I feel you like I do feel you know tears start welling up inside when you start talking about doing life with people like having you know that my suggestion regular my suggestion for church was just because

1:35:04Adam Schafer:that one's the first thing that pops well the thing that's nice about that is because it's

1:35:07Sal Di Stefano:it's built in but you you said something right now i mean if you're open to i mean grab a cup of coffee with those people that you're seeing in the gym i mean instead of it just ending right there in the gym if you're connecting with some of those people then if and you don't want to go to a place like a church to do it then the other option is that is to lean into hey what are you doing later on or let's get a cup of coffee and making that effort and doing that because there's

1:35:31Adam Schafer:a difference between uh you know what we we typically have many of us have now we're called duty-free relationships. So it's like, Hey, how you doing? I'm doing great. Good to see you. I'll see you tomorrow type of deal. Yeah. Versus the like doing life with people. They get in, they know what's going on. They know the struggle there. It's like, they see all of you, you see all of them type of deal. And I mentioned the other, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. I mean, the truth is, is that there are people around here that I've known for years and years that I love, that love me, that know my story.

1:36:05We just don't get together, you know? Do it.

1:36:10Adam Schafer:Prioritize it. It'll make such a big difference, hon. There's another aspect here with pain that I need to touch on. Part of it is your body's starting to feel safe, so you're starting to feel it. There's also this thing with pain where when you start to feel more joy, you start to feel less pain. Yeah, man. And the truth is, is that I've like gone through a lot of courses on, you know, the kind of neuroscience around pain. And I'm well aware of the, you know, kind of danger signal that pain is, you know, trying to convey. And that's not always about physical injury. A lot of times it's because there's something that you're perceiving that is unsafe about life in general.

1:36:56And I've recognized that I have kind of an underlying anxiety that has, you know, been me feeling like life is kind of a dangerous place. So I'm working, I'm definitely working on that as well. And I've been, I work with a therapist as well, like for a few months now, and that's also been really helpful. um so yeah i think what you're saying is really really important um and i have thought a lot about that with this you know with with the increase in pain like okay well i know you know that pain is a danger signal inflammation is too you know even the puffiness in the joints like that is something that our brain um has a role in creating in our bodies um and and it does not necessarily mean that there's something wrong with my body.

1:37:54Adam Schafer:No. And just again, just to illustrate this, you know, I've had experiences where I was in an emergency situation. I had to exert my physicality and didn't notice I injured myself until much later when I calmed down. Right. And so when you're in a like real, like consistent fight or flight, you just don't feel it because you got to keep going. And I think part of this might be you're starting to feel safe to feel that pain. So what I want to do, I want to have you back on in 30 days and try and turn this into an actionable thing. Like, okay, cool. I need to hang out with somebody. Maybe that looks like, you know, that person that you love, you know, that person that's there for you.

1:38:37Adam Schafer:And maybe that looks like this. You call them up and you say, I need to be around. I need a friend right now. Can we meet up once a week? Can we just hang out once a week? Maybe that's what it looks like. But try something actionable with that. Keep the dancing. Keep doing the dancing because you love it. Stay the course with your workouts. Stay the course of nutrition. Modify if you need, but you're doing everything right there. I wouldn't change anything. So the full body, two days a week, like that piece, I, you know, I've been wearing this Whoop app and I heard your guys' podcast on like, you know, the tracking and all of that.

1:39:15It's actually been so helpful for me because I can look at, you know, my recoveries in the red or in the yellow or in the green and then look back at the day before and be like, oh, this is what you did consistently. And my recovery is often really low when I have like big work days and I work out. So that's why I've been like, OK, is my workday coming across like that's enough and I'm not going to be pushing the weights on those days. And then, you know, full body two days a week. Is that, does that seem reasonable?

1:39:50Adam Schafer:That's fine. I even like maps 15 protocol for you. Yeah. Do you have that program? That's what I was. That's what I was doing. Oh, stay there. Yeah. Well, that's what has been feeling like it's keeping me in a pain cycle, like just lifting weights, the days that I'm working when I'm doing 15, I've been doing it six days a week, you know, two lifts, that's it. And then I'm in pain. Here's how I would modify it. I would go MAPS 15. When your work days are light, you do it. When they're heavy, you don't. And you just pick up where you left off.

1:40:22Sal Di Stefano:Okay.

1:40:23Adam Schafer:Okay.

1:40:24Sal Di Stefano:So it might look like MAPS 15 three days a week. That's right. Yeah. So you don't need a lot of volume. You've done a really good job of lifting weights very consistently for a while. And you've built good muscle. You'll get better results. You don't need to do a lot to maintain that. And then I would add to that, that even give yourself the permission that if it's a pushing exercise and you've been pushing a lot massaging do a row instead do a row do a lap pull down do more posterior chain stuff so you'll you'll be okay with that so we can we can modify it like that also but you mass 15 when you feel good that's right i feel you know and i think that i mean not think i definitely deal with the whole body dysmorphia thing um so i never know if i'm just like playing games with my brain, but I, I feel like I'm not like, I'll feel like I'm losing muscle, you know, and gaining.

1:41:20I mean, my clothes have been tight on me. I know you guys are like, if you gain a couple pounds on the scale, no biggie. And I'm just like, okay, whatever. Maybe I've gained a couple more than a couple pounds on the scale. Maybe my body just needs that right now. And so just let it go. Let it go. Trust, trust.

1:41:36Adam Schafer:First of all, I'm still like, I get nervous. No, no, no. First of all, your delts and your arms look amazing. Okay. Not to invalidate you, but you look great there. What does taking care of Thais look like when Thais says that to herself? Yeah. I mean, that's like just returning to love, you know, just being like, and so what? You know, so what if you've gained some weight? So what if you're not having the muscles right now? Like, even if that is what's happening, it might not be what's happening, but what does that matter? Love yourself. like take care of yourself do what you need to do to be healthy to get your sleep to get your recovery and that's right you know the rest of it will come along in its own time ironic trusting the timeline ironically it looks like this you're gonna let go of the muscle and the body you're just gonna let go of it you're just gonna exercise to feel good yeah you're just gonna eat right to feel good and you're gonna let go of the aesthetic stuff ironically that's what's gonna lead to the aesthetic stuff i know i feel this like that's inside like yeah yeah this is a hard breakup yeah it is yeah yeah yeah so you gotta let go of the aesthetic stuff fight the exercise is to make you feel better if it doesn't make you feel better don't do it the nutrition is to make you feel better that's it right now okay can we do that for 30 days and have you back on yeah i mean definitely uh-huh yeah all right i gotta say that the day that i went in and did the full body workout i felt so good because it was the first time in months that i had done that because i've been doing the 15 you know i've been doing the shorter ones going into two lifts but there was something about going in there and just like pushing hard and like being there for an hour and like i just felt i it does something in my brain you know i feel like there's this chemical something that happens and all of a sudden, like life just looks brighter and beautiful.

1:43:32And so I kind of, you know, like, I don't know, there's a part of me that really likes that too, but you're saying not to kind of go there.

1:43:40Adam Schafer:There's nothing wrong with that. It feels like you accomplished something like, Oh my God, I feel feeling okay again. Um, there's a empowerment that comes from it. There's nothing wrong with that until it becomes detrimental.

1:43:53Sal Di Stefano:We just got got to be careful that that feeling that you're getting isn't a feeling of normalcy or old patterns because sometimes that feels really good too it's like oh this yes this feels good i know what this feels like and so so i like the idea that you had the whoop and you're measuring your recovery and you're seeing that because you know maybe you're on to something maybe that is going to give you a better balance better sleep and we see the metrics and you feel it and that's a good sign so this isn't like uh go do this this is exactly the right answer for you it's like Like, sure, we can play with that way of training.

1:44:26Sal Di Stefano:Let's see how it improves sleep. Let's see how it improves those things. If we see all those things go up, then we're on to something. If we don't, then maybe that feeling that you have is less of like it's actually serving you and it's more of going back to other patterns that you had in the past. So I don't know that yet. But when we check in 30 days with you, we'll talk more about it. I think the main focus between now and 30 days, though, more than the workout, we'll get to the workout stuff. I think I'm less worried about that. it's what sal is saying is go go get it go do a date or two with some of your friends or go go join a community or go learn a new dance so you're in a community of people learning a new dance and you're meeting new people and i mean do something like do something actionable that way right now that's to me that's the prescription for now you know what yeah i just had a big like moment when you said that because i haven't been to a live in-person dance class and that is a really nice way to connect yes oh there you go another kind of community heck yes if you love dance that that was the first thing came to my mind uh i know sal with the church way i would right thing that came to my mind she loves dance she said it like eight times we've been on this call love it like i would be like pick a dance you've never learned like have you ever done swing i don't know in partners or have you ever done salsa dance whatever the dance you haven't done and go join a new community and learn in a group of you know and mess up and have fun and laugh and get to know somebody else who's also learning and i bet you meet somebody at a similar place and then go have some coffee later.

1:45:53Sal Di Stefano:I mean, lean into that. Yeah, that's good. I like that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right, good. That's your homework. We're going to see you in 30 days. We'll see you in 30 days. You know what? I'll see you guys in like two days. Oh, you're coming. Are you coming here? Oh, great. Oh, great. Good. Oh, awesome. Now I can give you a hug in real life. Oh, God. If I would have known that, we would have done less talking right now. I'd just talk to you in person. We'll do a follow-up. I'm so grateful. Oh, good. We'll see you on Saturday. Awesome. Yeah, I'll see you guys on Saturday. Thank you so much.

1:46:25I really appreciate it. Okay. Awesome. Bye.

1:46:28Adam Schafer:See ya. I assumed she was taking a class with dance. No. That's what I thought. That's great.

1:46:34Sal Di Stefano:What I envisioned, because the way she was saying it, is like she goes out dancing. Oh, yeah. Right? She just loves to go out dancing. No, that's perfect. But that was the first thing that came to my mind. It's like, go learn it. Because, you know, you see, like when you go learn like that, like everybody's kind of messing up. And it's like, that's perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Meet somebody like that.

1:46:49Adam Schafer:No, it's crazy, you guys. Look at the data on loneliness and its effect on pain, chronic illness, blood lipids, cancer, heart disease. You name it, it is a major risk factor for everything bad. Yeah. And when you don't have that, especially when you come out of what she did, I mean, you could do all the stuff on your own all you want, and it'll help, but having those people around you, man, it makes a big difference. Our next caller is Andrew from Ontario. Andrew, what's up, man? What up, Andrew? Not too much. How are you guys doing? Good, good, man. How can we help you?

1:47:22Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, so, you know, I'll read off the email here like everybody else, but I've been a listener for a short time now. I started my fitness journey as of February 2026. 30 years old, 6 '2", 280 pounds, heavy equipment operator at a mine. Doing a rotation 14 days in, 14 days out. I'm doing a push-pull leg split with active recovery on rest days. So I've been doing 20-minute incline walks and mixing in 20-minute saunas with that. My workout was provided by ChatGPT. Being mindful of keeping my protein intake high, 220 grams is what I've been shooting for. So being a camp job for two weeks, I'm eating camp food, So I'm pretty limited on trying to keep whole foods coming in, but, you know, do the best I can with that.

1:48:19Sal Di Stefano:When I was 13 years old, I also had my gallbladder removed for gallstones. My question is, you know, how do I keep continuing to gain strength while losing fat? And, you know, maybe a fitness program, accommodate my two weeks in, two weeks out schedule while I have access to a gym. and, you know, at home, I don't quite have everything. And then some nutrition guidance for having my gallbladder removed.

1:48:47Adam Schafer:Oh, good. Okay, so real quick, the routine that you're doing, are you able to follow that when you're at your remote location?

1:48:57Sal Di Stefano:Usually at home, that's why I'm limited access to equipment. So wintertime, I have access to a full gym when I'm at home. Summertime, I'm out of my summer camp. So I picked up a couple kettlebells this summer. I got a 35 and a 45-pound kettlebell that I've been working out with, but that's all I have throughout the summertime.

1:49:14Adam Schafer:Okay. Okay, so, and then how's the workout been working for you since you've been doing it?

1:49:20Sal Di Stefano:It's been good. I mean, I've noticed improvements on my fitness. Clothes is looser now. Day-to-day activities is much better.

1:49:27Adam Schafer:Okay, good. And so this has been happening since February, so you're already seeing some great progress then.

1:49:34Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1:49:35Adam Schafer:And how consistent are you with the protein intake?

1:49:40Sal Di Stefano:uh every day i make sure i hit it oh are you eating mostly whole foods you stick into like meal prepping and stuff um mostly whole foods but when i'm at work that's when i'm limited to uh what i get right so they're feeding us while we're up there got it okay so okay wait i want to be clear here because i think this is important um it sounds like the the you're better you're better on diet consistency when you're when you're home and you have you can you can prep and so that but you're better on consistency on the workouts when you're on your on camp is that right am i getting that right yeah you got her okay so the the part that i and and if you're getting that protein intake consistently while you're lifting at camp we're probably doing pretty good but that would be my big concern is that are are we are we still hitting our protein intake consistently at camp where you don't have as much control of the food um yeah no i am i'm hitting my protein shakes if i feel like i'm low i'll hit my protein shakes and stuff like that um creatine i'm getting 10 milligrams of creatine in a day okay bro you're

1:50:45Adam Schafer:doing good so what you need really is i i mean fix your pro yeah i think what it needs what you need is um i think a suspension trainer workout for your home would be perfect and so you'd be you'd be strength training at home with a suspension trainer and then when you're on location then Then you go back to the weights. I love that. Okay. I have a program called MAPS Suspension. I can send that to you.

1:51:09Sal Di Stefano:He could also do MAPS 15, the suspension version, when he's at home and then the advanced one when he's at work. That would actually be a good –

1:51:18Adam Schafer:Well, tell me about the workout that you got from ChatGPT, the push-pull legs. It's three days a week. How long is each workout taking it? What does that look like?

1:51:28Sal Di Stefano:My workouts are averaging about 45 minutes an hour. it's hard because I'm working 12 hour shifts while I'm at work so I'm trying to fit gym in trying to get my eight hours of sleep while getting food and showering so it's you know

1:51:39Adam Schafer:it's pretty it's it's tight would it be a would it be plausible does this work for you instead of doing three days a week you're doing more like five or six days a week but you're only doing two

1:51:50Sal Di Stefano:lifts a day yeah uh yeah I could do that okay I mean I'm so like while I've been while I've been doing this i've been trying to build the consistent consistency of going to the gym every day so whether it's just going in there to hit the treadmill if i'm not lifting or doing something oh we're good yeah we're good dude we're gonna send you maps 15 when you're at the gym you do

1:52:11Adam Schafer:the you do the gym version when you're at home you do the suspension version yep yep that's it you just follow okay yep you're set dude and that's perfect and with diet stay the course because here's the deal with diet you're going to want to like do all kinds of crazy stuff cut and you hit your protein stick to whole natural foods

1:52:27Sal Di Stefano:consistency is everything over time

1:52:29Adam Schafer:you're going to get body comp change you're going to lean out

1:52:31Sal Di Stefano:you're going to lean out you're going to build muscle and lose body fat the scale I'm not even worried about the scale that much you shouldn't see big swings on the scale if you're eating properly and your strength training not initially yeah you're going to especially the first six months to six months to a year he's at where he's at right now yeah yeah just you're going to and so and you feel it you kind of already feel it you just need someone to tell you dude you're you're on pace and a better workout for you will be maps 15 protocol because that'll be every day it's just two lifts when you got the gym equipment you're hitting the barbell movements which is going to be great for you when you're at home and you have limited equipment you're going to do the suspension trainer and follow it as it's laid out that's it and if you do anything more it's walking that's it so if you got extra time or you are at the gym and it's a technically walk i'm already pretty active like i'll when i'm at home i'm hitting 10 12 000 steps a day usually pretty easy when i'm at work that's when it's different because I'm in machines all day and stuff like that.

1:53:24Sal Di Stefano:So that's when it probably drops like 5 ,000 to 7 ,000. That's also when you're getting the good lifting in. So it's great. It's a good balance.

1:53:32Adam Schafer:It's a perfect program for you, bro. You just keep following it. You just switch from suspension trainer to barbells.

1:53:38Sal Di Stefano:Okay. And then what should my calorie intake be shooting out? I've been just kind of eating while I'm hungry. I'm not really too worried about cutting or anything like that. That's exactly what we'd tell you. We would tell you, eat when you're hungry, eat whole foods, hit your protein intake. Calories will land when they're good. Calories land.

1:53:51Adam Schafer:If you're trying to stick mostly to whole foods, then your calories are going to go where they need to. If you start eating lots of processed foods, fast food, junk food, that's when things get crazy. Yeah.

1:54:01Sal Di Stefano:Okay, yeah. Like my lunches, it's like basically all fruit. Then I got my protein, rice or potatoes or something for my carb, and then that's basically it. I'm going too crazy. No, you're doing good, bro.

1:54:11Adam Schafer:Just stay consistent. Do not get caught in the like, I got to make this happen faster mentality. That's where you'll mess up.

1:54:17Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't need. Okay.

1:54:19Adam Schafer:That's it, man. Okay.

1:54:20Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

1:54:21Adam Schafer:Okay, right on. You got it, bro. I appreciate it, guys.

1:54:23Sal Di Stefano:Follow 15 all the way through the way we're telling you, and then I'd love to hear back from you what you saw. I think you can get great results from this. Yep. Okay, I can do that. All right, Andrew, we'll send that over to you. We're going to beat out the robots. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. All right. Why'd you be? He's changing with T. I'm just saying. Oh, man. Just saying.

1:54:43Adam Schafer:We're coming for those robots. Yeah. I mean, it's perfect. It's perfect for what he was looking for. No, it's absolutely. because that's a lot of people don't know that maps 15 has two options in there suspension trainer or barbell you know dumbbell work and so such a unique flip though right uh

1:54:58Sal Di Stefano:yep i have better access to the gym when i'm at work when i'm home i don't have as much i'm

1:55:05Adam Schafer:limited you know so but that but perfect you know our next caller is joseph from australia what's

1:55:10Sal Di Stefano:up man how you doing joseph hey what's up how you guys doing good how can we help you um so So I've kind of reached out because I'm 6 '2", and I've never dunked basketball in my life. So I had an MPFL reconstruction when I was 19. So it was about six years ago. And I've kind of had on and off pain the last six years. And that means I have to pretty much warm up for 30 minutes before I play basketball, like before I do legs at the gym or anything. So I pretty much keep getting injured. So I'm kind of trying to sort that out while also being able to dunk a basketball. And I'm not sure how to structure my training so that I'm not overloading my legs.

1:55:59Adam Schafer:Yeah, good question. So easy, by the way. I'm looking at your email. It says you play basketball on Mondays?

1:56:05Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, at the moment, yeah. Okay.

1:56:06Adam Schafer:And you're playing for how long?

1:56:09Sal Di Stefano:It's just a full game. Okay. Yeah.

1:56:11Adam Schafer:And then I also see here that you have a 20 % imbalance in your hamstrings and 40 % imbalance in your quads based on a physio session you had two weeks ago? Yes, that was on a road in. I've been back since, and that's gotten a lot better. Okay. Maps 15 symmetry would be perfect for you. Symmetry, yeah, I was just going to say. It's all unilateral. Living there for a while. It's the right amount of volume for you while you're playing basketball. And I think that it's a perfect routine for you. and I would stay there for a while.

1:56:42Sal Di Stefano:Two things, because they're kind of addressing, I feel like, the pain and making sure we balance ourselves out and everything like that. That's for sure. The vertical thing, one, I don't know how much strength you've gained in just your regular old squat. I remember going from not being able to dunk to being able to dunk was just once I got my squat over like 250 pounds, I could throw down the basketball so easy. and my whole life up into that, which was, you know, playing basketball. And as a kid doing all the vertical jump things and trying to figure that, like none of the things, nothing worked.

1:57:19Sal Di Stefano:I couldn't dunk. All of a sudden I stopped worrying about playing basketball as much. I started strength training like crazy, trying to be a bodybuilder, put on 20 pounds, which makes it even more difficult. But I put a, you know, weight up on a squat bar. And then all of a sudden I could dunk the basketball. It was like overnight. So that that's a big one is like, if you just get big, strong, powerful legs from squatting, A lot of times that'll shoot somebody right up there. The other thing is technique. And if you don't follow Paul Fabritz already, you got to follow Paul. Do you follow Paul Fabritz?

1:57:49Sal Di Stefano:Oh, bro. Pull up your Instagram right now and go to Corey Schlesinger. Pull up and look up Paul Fabritz, PGAF performance. This is, he is the goat when it comes to vertical jump. And he talks, one of the things that we've interviewed him on here, so you can listen to his interview that we've done with him. And I've talked to him about he'd have athletes and in the same session increase their vertical as much as six inches in and just by teaching better technique. So learning better. You have to be healthy. Your joints have to be able to withhold, you know, a lot more force. And really so that the process with that, and this is why like symmetry makes a lot of sense, even the regular symmetry, because in the beginning, we're really focusing on isometric, you know, stabilizing these positions.

1:58:38Sal Di Stefano:and increasing force in those positions. So, you know, you're able to reinforce your joints. So that way, too, you're allowed to produce more force. So to be able to get more explosive and not necessarily, I mean, obviously, like building strength in your legs is going to improve that, you know, substantially. But when we, to be able to build upon that and get to the point where you're going to peak and do a lot more plyometric work and, you know, a lot more explosive movement, you know we're really going to need to reinforce that so going through that process of reinforcement you know the first phase of symmetry especially I would almost repeat that maybe you know one cycle and then you know go go through that you know work your way all the way till we do the five by five see where you're at I guarantee you'll see quite a bit of it so Justin

1:59:27Adam Schafer:you think regular symmetry I do yeah all right let's send him regular symmetry and then I see here in your cal your your food intake it says you're you're averaging between 2250 to 2500 i've changed that what is it um between 26 and 2900 okay and you're hitting protein so i don't know sorry you're hitting your protein targets yeah i'm getting about i'm probably getting more i'm getting about 200 every day good that's good that's good stay consistent with sure if i needed more or not but no no stay consistent with that and your calories should should keep going up before you try to cut. Yeah, okay.

2:00:02Yeah, I'm getting married in just over two months. I was trying to just, like, lose a little bit of... Mm-hmm.

2:00:07Sal Di Stefano:Well, just know that all three of those are, like, different, right? Listen, yeah. Like, rehabbing for injury, getting vertical jump, and getting ready shredded for a wedding, or all three, like... Rehabbing, we need to feed. Yeah. Nah, I'm pretty happy with it right now. Okay, good. Okay, good.

2:00:22Adam Schafer:Worst thing you could do is try to create, like, rush something within two months. So, yeah, don't worry about your wedding. You look great. She's already going to marry you. You won. Yeah. Just lifts and weights will help, too. Slowly bumping your calories. You're probably going to be around 3 ,200, 3 ,300 at some point. Yeah, at least. And map symmetry. That's your program. Yeah. And that'll help balance things out, and it'll improve your strength in a way that should contribute to your vertical.

2:00:48Sal Di Stefano:Do you follow the NBA? Yes, very much so. So Mac McClung, okay, that's his trainer, is Paul Fabritz. Ah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that's, I mean, definitely go through his stuff. He's got incredible stuff around vertical. So he's definitely the GOAT when it comes to that stuff. Easy. That's good. You got it, man. You're good, brother. Congratulations, too, by the way. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right, thanks. See ya.

2:01:12Adam Schafer:Yeah. Yeah, I like that basketball player. Stop, dude. So authentic. Yeah, you know, when I saw his email and the physio saw that 40 % imbalance in quads, that's a big deal. It's a big one. Yeah, I mean, just balancing that out should make a big difference. Sure. For sure. But like what you said, Adam, there's a skill involved, there's how quickly you fire, but then there's strength. Strength is the base.

2:01:42Sal Di Stefano:Oh, dude, I, I, so I was this kid, right. Who I'm six, two and a half, six, three, right. Wanted a vertical, couldn't dunk the basketball in high school, worked on it, did the strength shoes, did calves like crazy, did all this stuff, right. Back then they had no idea what we're doing. Got into my twenties, moved to the Bay area, became a personal trainer, cared about my body, the way it looked, put on like 20 pounds, got into squatting. all of a sudden go out to the basketball court. Just surprise yourself? Oh, bro, two-handed jam. Like what? Like out of nowhere. And I went, I haven't picked up a basketball, and I'm heavier.

2:02:20Sal Di Stefano:But that's how much... Strength adds a lot. Oh, that's how much just fundamental good strength in your legs can make a huge difference. And so that would be, I mean, a guy of that kind of height already, that would be the direction I would go.

2:02:35Adam Schafer:Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Mind Pump Media, we'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin

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